Scientists Store King Speech, Shakespeare Sonnets in DNA
Scientists have stored audio and text on fragments of DNA and then retrieved them with near-perfect fidelity — a technique that one day may provide a new way to handle the overwhelming data of the digital age.
The scientists encoded in DNA an audio clip of Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech, a photograph, a copy of Crick and Watson’s famous “double helix” scientific paper from 1953 and Shakespeare’s 154 sonnets. They were then able to retrieve them with 99.99% accuracy. The experiment was reported Wednesday in the journal Nature.
